Those With Knowledge
by preposterousnotion
Summary: One does not simply fall in love with Sherlock Holmes.  Oneshot involving gnomes and holding hands.


Those With Knowledge

**Disclaimer: Nope, characters are not mine, I don't even have a garden gnome.**

**AN: The title is thanks to the great J.R.R Tolkien, as explained in the 'Gnome' entry on Wikipedia. I blame re reading 'The Hobbit' for this, and the fact that my Muse is crazy.**

**Ruby.**

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><p>One does not simply fall in love with Sherlock Holmes<p>

There's a moment in conversation (and when he says conversation, he means Sherlock is rattling off deductions at a rate of knots and John is nodding along and sometimes interjecting with the odd well-deserved 'brilliant' or 'amazing') when John catches the look of hurt on Sherlock's face at Sally Donovan's knee jerk response to his solving of a case in 20 minutes that the police have been investigating for the past 4 days.

It makes his insides twist and writhe and he has the sudden urge to scream, because maybe if people had replaced their under-thought insults with praise and admiration, Sherlock would know how to accept compliments without looking suspiciously for an ulterior motive, would be able to lavish kindness on others, and would be able to play full concertos at times other that 3am when he thinks there's no one to hear the emotion in every lingering note.

The look is so fleeting, that he knows Sherlock will assume he hadn't seen it, and his observations continue with barely a syllable pause, and John makes sure to fill a few sentences when he's finished, with a thesaurus worthy expansion of approval.

Sherlock flashes him a strange look, and he jumps away as though he has been stung, when he realises that he has been hanging onto the taller man's long arm.

He coughs and straightens the cable knit on his jumper into parallel lines, and follows Sherlock with a start as his deep thrumming voice summons his presence.

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><p>He does his own bit of snooping, and 3 nights later, Sherlock has gone out somewhere to do something, he's armed with a torch and a piece of paper with Donovan's address scribbled on it, and he takes a cab to the end of the street and walks the rest of the way, with a gait altered to something decidedly more <em>slinky<em>, in the dancing shadow's cast in the orange glow of the street lamps.

There's a gnome with a twisted face glaring at him across the small paving slabbed back garden in the darkness, and part of him wishes he had brought his gun, so he could shoot its stupid head off and run off into the night on an adrenaline high.

Instead he stares at it for a long while and wonders why he hasn't really thought any further than some kind of petty revenge to make him feel better, and the gnome just stares back, and John feels angry and also sort of childish, and then he chickens out and at the last minute, when he's got the gnome in his hands and is about to throw it over the hedge into the next door's garden, he rolls it under the shed and legs it to the bus stop to catch the last bus home.

Sherlock stares at him when he twirls elegantly into the apartment an hour or so later, unwinding his scarf from his neck as he goes, and John screws his eyes shut so as not to ogle at the revealed expanse of bitable neck and the tantalising triangle of pale skin at his open collar.

"Are you wearing a hoody?" Sherlock asks, a slight mirth in his voice, and John frowns and pouts because he's not that old, for god's sake, and he has an _ASBO_- of course he can wear a damn hoody if he damn wants to and whatever he wears he's always going to look like some retired school teacher next to the cover art for the Next catalogue besides _damn Sherlock._

"No," he says, sullenly, and pulls the hood over his eyes and snatches at the newspaper on the coffee table, which is missing half the articles from where Sherlock has cut them out to dissect every last bit of information in them.

Sherlock continues to stare at him for a while longer, through the hole in the first page where the story about the member of cabinet sleeping with his ex-wife in order to keep her new job as a prostitute afloat used to be, before he spins around and disappears off to attend to some experiment or other, and John eventually slopes off to bed.

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><p>The next day, Sherlock shepherds John to the Met just as he's finished spreading his toast with jam, and John sits the whole way in the backseat of the cab under the watchful eye of the cabby, who warns him 3 times not to get jam on the upholstery, as though he is about 8 years old.<p>

It's a cold case or something, but the real drama is the fact that no one knows why Sally Donovan spent 20 minutes that morning crying in Lestrade's office, and while John is having a stand off with the coffee machine, which keeps giving him two cups worth of hot water and a splash of milk for his troubles, Sherlock finds him and pushes him along with a warm hand on his back, with instructions that they need to go somewhere.

"Apparently it belonged to her late grandmother, and was the only thing she got given in her will, and this obviously means that there's some sort of family feud, meaning that Donovan hasn't received equal treatment to her brothers… something to do with her choice in career maybe, or breaking up with a long term boyfriend her parents greatly approved of."

John swallows scratchily.

"The gnome," Sherlock adds.

"How can you possibly know that," John snaps, his voice raised louder than he had expected, and he feels his face go a little red.

Sherlock narrows his eyes. "Speculation, apart from the first part," he says slowly, "Lestrade told me."

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><p>John stands fidgeting uncomfortably by the low wrought iron gate that opens into the much too familiar paving slabbed back garden of Sally Donavon's house as Sherlock hops around, offering the odd comment about the neighbour's dog's habit of jumping over the wall and urinating all over Sally's pansies.<p>

"You should just look around the garden," he offers, after a long while, "It might have… rolled somewhere in the wind… or something."

Sherlock jumps up from where he has crouched under the window sill and regards him carefully.

"Yes do," he says, pleasantly, "You have limited helpfulness, standing there."

John half-heartedly pokes around the bushes around the garden, before gravitating towards the shed. Words of surprised discovery stick in his throat.

The gnome isn't there.

His heart rate rocketing, he lies flat on his stomach, banging his head in his desperation to wriggle as far as he can under the shed.

The gnome definitely isn't there.

He's pretty sure he's making all the worms in the garden rise to the surface with the force of his heartbeat against the ground.

"John?"

He bangs his head again, and lets out a few choice curses that would make his army mates proud, before squirming out from under the shed and stumbling unsteadily to his feet.

Sherlock stands imperiously in front of him, the gnome tucked into the crook of his arms as though he is cradling a baby.

John feels a thousand things at once and settles for just blinking rapidly and rubbing his eyes.

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><p>Sherlock leaves the gnome in Donovan's office, placing it in various different positions around the room before settling on leaving it sitting in her chair, and leaves in a flourish of black coat and cheekbones before anyone knows he was there.<p>

John's waiting for him outside, he's used all his money on the cabs they'd taken that morning already.

Sherlock grins at him and holds out his hand.

John stares at it.

"Come on John," he offers, voice warm and inviting, and John wants nothing more than to grab the proffered treat and never let go and live a life of excitement and madness and never be alone again.

Sherlock makes the decision (that's never actually a decision) for him, and the possessive longing of his grip on John's hand sends a thrill of bright heat through his body.

No.

One does not simply fall in love with Sherlock Holmes.

One may instead be one John Watson, and may find themselves with a deep and unexplainable dependence on the consistently inconsistence of a life entangled with the world's only consulting detective, in which there lies a mutual attachment and a future agreement to blend a rumoured 3 continents of experience with a determined whole mind palace worth of knowledge to become something one puny word can't quite capture.

All John Watson knows is that it's _damn brilliant_.

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><p>Please Review :)<p> 


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